TV-am Original Programming

TV-am was a TV company that broadcast the ITV franchise for breakfast television in the United Kingdom from 1 February 1983 until 31 December 1992. The station was the UK's first national operator of a commercial breakfast television franchise. Its daily broadcasts were between 6 am and 9:25 am.

Throughout its nine years and 10 months of broadcast, the station regularly had problems, resulting in numerous management changes, especially in its early years. It also suffered from major financial cutbacks hampering its operations. Though on a stable footing by 1986 and winning its ratings battle with BBC '' Breakfast Time'', within a year further, turmoil had ensued when industrial action hit the company.

Despite these setbacks, by the 1990s, TV-am's flagship programme '' Good Morning Britain'' had become the most popular breakfast show on UK television. However, following a change in the law regarding TV franchising, the company lost its licence. It was replaced by GMTV in 1993.

Foundation

The Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) announced on 24 January 1980 that in the next ITV franchising round it would offer a national licence for breakfast television. Eight applications were received and on 28 December 1980 the IBA announced that it had awarded the breakfast franchise to TV-am.

Although the initial launch date was set for June 1983, to avoid clashing with the 1982 launch of Channel 4, the IBA allowed the station to bring forward its start date to 1 February 1983 in response to the launch of the BBC service '' Breakfast Time'' two weeks earlier.

This hurried start affected the company in two ways. Firstly, ITV had failed in its negotiations for royalties and rates for advertising on the new Channel 4 and the breakfast service with the actors' trade union, Equity. The union instructed its members to boycott the new station, which meant there was little or no revenue from advertising in the early days.

Secondly, it was believed that the BBC's breakfast service would be highbrow, focusing on news and analysis, so TV-am had developed its new service to copy that. However, the BBC launched a lightweight, magazine-style programme that mimicked the style of United States breakfast television. With the launch of the BBC's ''Breakfast Time'' brought forward at short notice, this gave little time for TV-am to redevelop its plans.

TV-am was spearheaded by the "Famous Five" who were not only lined up as presenters on the station, but were also shareholders: Michael Parkinson, David Frost (1983–92), Angela Rippon (1983), Anna Ford (1983) and Robert Kee. Esther Rantzen had originally been one of the station's 'star' line up of presenter/shareholders, but pulled out in 1981 after the birth of her third child; she and the company agreed that the early morning starts would present a problem in her raising her child. She had also been persuaded by the BBC to continue producing and presenting ''That's Life!'' and conceded she did not want to give up the show, or worse, see it continue with another anchor.

There had been many difficulties for the other presenters in the run-up to launch. When the franchise was announced in December 1980, Angela Rippon's contract with the BBC was about to expire, and was not renewed as a result of her new employment. This left her seeking freelance work before TV-am went on air. Anna Ford was dismissed by ITN, which had been part of another consortium bidding for the breakfast contract. ITN had presented Ford as their female programme presenter as part of their bid, unaware that she was planning to defect to TV-am. ITN heavily criticised her disloyalty and said that her dishonesty had made their bid seem "ridiculous" to the IBA. ITN replaced Ford with Selina Scott, who herself landed a double blow to ITN when she defected to the BBC to present ''Breakfast Time'' towards the end of 1982. Michael Parkinson did remain with the BBC, who hoped to persuade him to stay as they had with Rantzen, but he finally left the corporation in 1982. A challenge for all the "famous five" came before the station launch when in an administration error, the contracts for the five presenters were sent to the wrong individuals, which led Angela Rippon to discover she was being paid £60,000 per year, considerably less than Anna Ford who was being paid £145,000. The women also learnt that their male counterparts Frost and Parkinson were both being paid almost £250,000 each.Leapman, Michael. Treachery? The Power Struggle at TV-AM. Allen & Unwin; First Edition (5 April 1984)

TV-am's headquarters and studios were at Breakfast Television Centre, Hawley Crescent, Camden Town, London. Designed by Terry Farrell and converted from a former car showroom, Henlys Rover, the building included a number of large plastic egg cups along its roofline facing Regent's Canal; these egg cups also served as the programme's closing credits copyright year identifier, with all previous years also kept on-screen behind the current year.

Programmes originally ran from 6 am to 9:15 am, with '' Daybreak'', then '' Good Morning Britain'' (neither related to the 2010 and 2014 ITV shows of the same name, respectively) filling weekday mornings. This was followed by a 10-minute interval before the start of the regional ITV franchises at 9:25 am. This interval gave British Telecom time to manually switch the broadcast signals from TV-am to each regional ITV franchise while the switching process was converted to allow automatic switching, which was introduced gradually throughout the network. From the end of May 1983 the IBA extended TV-am's hours to 9:25 am to allow continuous programming, following which ''Good Morning Britain'' was reduced to a two-hour slot from 7 am to 9 am. The 9 am to 9:25 am section was relaunched as a female-orientated lifestyle magazine segment titled ''After Nine''. Although TV-am was a separate broadcaster occupying the ITV network channel during the morning, from the late 1980s the ITV stations extended their hours to 6 am to provide 24-hour television, handing over to TV-am at 6 am.

Difficult beginnings

While the BBC's ''Breakfast Time'' was successful, TV-am's early ratings were disappointing. Its high-minded and somewhat starchy approach, summed up in chief executive Peter Jay's phrase "mission to explain", sat uneasily at that time of day, compared to ''Breakfast Times accessible magazine style, which mixed heavy news and light-hearted features (famously moving cabinet ministers, after a serious interview, to help with a cookery demonstration).

The first day of broadcasting included an hour of news in ''Daybreak'', a short film and an interview with Norman Tebbit about the current level of unemployment, a live comic strip called ''The World of Melanie Parker'', and ''Through the Keyhole''. Within two weeks of the launch the ratings dropped sharply, within a month after the launch, the ratings fell again to just under 300,000. The company's weekend show, presented by Michael Parkinson, initially became the only success for the station, largely because the BBC
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